I apologize for not enthusiastically testing the intervening beta releases, but real life got in the way.

The one disappointing regression between 177.13 and 117.70 is that 177.13 recognized that I was booting with the laptop shut and an external flat panel plugged in. 177.70 does not. When booting in this manner, everything is displayed on the external panel up to the point where X starts --- at that point, the external display powers off and the internal screen diplays events from the splash screen on forward.

Luckily, both releases respond to the keyboard "switch screen" key.

Other than that, 177.70 still suffers from running the GPU at it's powersaving 170Mhz rather than at full speed...